I’ve loved every minute of my manic four years at GCU. So much has happened – from being part of a team who interviewed the First Minister until she must have been sick of the sight of us to winning awards for my work.
My programme is brilliant and a highlight was producing daily bulletins throughout our coverage of the Scottish elections in 2016; it doesn’t get better than interviewing the most powerful person in the country.
It’s all been great though. GCU has amazing facilities and the lecturers all go above and beyond – from sharing their industry experience and contacts to creating new modules to fit our evolving needs, to simply being there for us. They are like family and without that support network I wouldn’t have been able to get the industry placements at, for example, the BBC, STV, Celtic and the Evening Times that, along with all I have learned at GCU, have helped me secure my dream job straight out of university as a sports reporter at Radio Clyde.
It’s always been my ambition to cover sport throughout my career and I was delighted to win, at last year’s Scottish Student Journalism Awards, the Sports Story of the Year category and the Calum MacDonald Award for overall excellence. That award means a great deal to me, not least as it recognised my work as a mentor with School Connect and the Caledonian Club.
I have experienced the whole journey with both of those GCU teams – when I was at school at St Andrew’s Secondary, the School Connect team worked with us and now I’m working as a mentor for the team myself. I owe everything to School Connect as I was set to study accountancy when a member of the team suggested that journalism could be a great fit for me and arranged for me to come in and learn more about it from the programme’s academics. I have never looked back.
I have gone on to be a mentor throughout my four years at GCU and it’s been a highlight. It’s great fun and incredibly rewarding – it feels like passing on the torch of what GCU has given me.
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